1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a message service of a mobile communication terminal, and particularly, to a system and method for generating a message reference number of a mobile communication terminal.
2. Description of the Related Art
A mobile terminal provides not only voice, but more recently data communication and multimedia services. One type of data communication service, a short message service, transmits a text message through a short message center (SMSC) to a user. An enhanced message service (EMS) may transmit the text message with attachments. The attachments may be pictures, animations, photos, melodies, and the like. These attachments may be provided by an EMS terminal. A single message from an EMS terminal may contain only a limited number of bytes of data. To increase the capacity of an EMS terminal, multiple data bytes are concatenated as one message utilizing a concatenation function.
The data contained in a concatenated message has a value associated with a reference number. For example, if the reference number is 8 bits, then the data has a value between 0 to 255. In another example, if the reference number is 16 bits, then the data has a value between 0 to 65335. Upon transmission of a mobile originated (MO) message, a mobile originated mobile station (MOMS) assigns reference numbers to messages for concatenation. A mobile terminated mobile station (MTMS) receiving the messages concatenates the messages having the reference numbers into one message.
A reference number contained in a message of the conventional mobile terminal has a limited number of bytes. In one example, a conventional mobile terminal is limited to communicating messages of 8 to 16 bytes. When a mobile terminal user exchanges a message with multiple users, the reference numbers are repeatedly used. The MTMS may receive a message having the same reference number as that of a previously received and stored message. Accordingly, the received message and the previously stored message having the same reference number, even if stored separately, are not concatenated to avoid a collision of reference numbers. The collision would result in a data error.
There is a need for improvements in communicating messages within a mobile communication system that addresses the above problems and provides additional advantages.